Sunday, April 19, 2015

Art can be so many things. It can help a person express their personality. It can tell a story. It can be used for advertising. Art is really all around us. Lydia loves to work on art projects and enjoys drawing also. She has construction paper art down, but she needs help in the area of drawing and adding details. So we were pretty excited to get a chance to try out Elementary 4-5, Book 1 The Elements of Art and Composition ($47.95) from Artistic Pursuits.

Students can work independently to learn the basic elements of drawing. They work on projects taht show how to use space, lines and shape to create their drawings. Lessons are also given in how to add details and show depth. The lessons are not only shown through simple drawings/illustrations in the book, but they also are shown beautiful works from the masters to find the elements in and see how they were used by those art experts.

Lessons are also not long. There is a short amount of reading and then lots of fun drawing. Lessons that lean heavily in the reading area are not a favorite of Lydia (or most kids), so that has helped out a lot with using this program.

The materials for Elementary 4-5, Book 1 The Elements of Art and Composition are simple. Drawing pencils, good colored pencils, sketching pad, scratch art paper and scratching pencil, and wide tipped black marker is all that is needed. So I have really enjoyed the limit of supplies that are wonderful when we homeschool on the road.

Like I mentioned earlier, students can work independently. You can see below that details and steps are laid out for students to follow.

Explanations and examples are given with each project. Projects are assigned and it also lists the supplies that the student would need to use.

This is our third book from Artistic Pursuits and we will keep using their program since they are so easy to use. We will probably go through Elementary 4-5, Book 1 The Elements of Art and Composition one more time just to give her extra practice because she does struggle with tremors. So she can get frustrated quickly. You can easily reuse their books with all your children, you only need to get more supplies. No need to spend a ton on expensive art classes when your child can learn at home. Saves you gas money and travel time also.